You Wouldn't Know — Because You Never Have

A standoff with Marquis Crocell.

But Crocell’s face showed not the slightest trace of fear.

Burzak and his soldiers were small fry.

I was supposed to have no magic — but Heinkel was standing right there.

“Surrender, Crocell.”

“What nonsense! You think I’m afraid of one dark elf?”

Was it a bluff?

No.

I frowned and ran through the situation again.

Warriors of the other races grew stronger through long decades of personal training. Human knights grew stronger across generations.

That was humanity’s advantage — the cycle of succession.

Magic Inheritance: the magic and swordsmanship of a predecessor passed down to the next heir, refined and built upon with each generation.

That was the strength of Karakas’s human knights.

But Crocell……

“Damn. There’s been no war.”

I finally understood what I had overlooked.

During my reign as emperor, human nobles hadn’t been particularly powerful.

In the war against the Seven Sin God, noble after noble had been cut down on the battlefield.

“With no war to die in, nobles stopped falling so easily. So they’ve had the same opportunity the knights always had. Inheriting and building on each generation’s power.”

Dominic was just a boy, but Crocell was the head of his house.

He would have received the accumulated magic and technique of his father, and his father’s father.

In other words, Crocell was…… strong.

He likely possessed skill and power that went beyond an ordinary knight.

All of it made possible because the empire I had built had known no war.

Crocell let out a short, mocking laugh.

“So you’re only realizing this now? Basic knowledge for anyone in society. My congratulations.”

“I’ll congratulate you at your funeral.”

I said it while glancing sideways at Heinkel.

Heinkel seemed to have caught on as well.

I had misjudged Crocell’s strength — but Crocell had no idea what I was capable of either.

This could still be finished quickly.

But then Crocell extended a hand toward me.

“There’s no need to kill both of you. Rigen, I’d like to let you live.”

“……”

“Kill Marquis Burzak with your own hands. Do that, and I’ll trust you and take you in. If you want Alicia, she’s yours.”

“Even as nonsense goes, this is modern art. You want me to kill the people of House Librata with my own hands?”

If Crocell’s plan succeeded, House Librata was finished.

And he wanted to recruit the son of that very house?

The offer was so far outside reason it should have been laughable — but Crocell made it with complete confidence.

“What’s so strange about it? You’re the youngest son, you can’t inherit the title regardless, and on top of that you have no magic. Everyone’s looked down on you and treated you like nothing, haven’t they? That’s why you ran wild outside, isn’t it? No recognition at home, so you acted out wherever you could find an audience.”

“……”

Crocell continued.

“But I’m different. Stand with me, and I’ll guarantee your safety, and everything else besides. Count of Librata? If that’s what you want, I’ll make it happen. When the count and the eldest are gone, that seat falls straight to you, doesn’t it? Or is there something more you’re after?”

“Why are you so set on recruiting me specifically?”

Crocell answered without hesitation.

“Because you’re capable.”

“……”

“You saw through a plan that not even Marquis Burzak beside you had the slightest inkling of. Oh, Alicia picked up on parts of it, yes. But Alicia was at the center of the operation because I deliberately left her small pieces of information. That way……”

“In real combat, nothing goes perfectly to plan. So instead of making it airtight, you build in one deliberate gap. The enemy pours everything into exploiting it, and you steer them exactly where you want them.”

Crocell’s expression shifted to one of genuine surprise.

Then — satisfaction.

“Sirik Karakas’s memoir on the Seven Sin God campaign. Volume three, chapter three.”

“It’s not orthodoxy. It’s a gamble.”

“Which is precisely why it makes the emperor’s greatness shine all the brighter.”

It only worked because we were out of supplies and out of soldiers.

I clicked my tongue.

“Right. The deliberate gap in your plan was Alicia. You counted on Dominic and me to be so swept up by her beauty that we’d lose our heads. And Alicia herself, even if she figured out your scheme, would still be playing inside your palm without someone from outside to help her.”

Without an external ally, Alicia had been powerless to act.

Crocell said with open satisfaction,

“……Yes. Exactly right. Brilliant, too brilliant! Why did no one see it sooner? I truly have no eye for talent.”

He shook his head.

“Rigen, come with me. To destroy the empire as it is and build a more equal and hopeful world!”

“Right. You truly……”

I smiled and tightened my grip on the sword.

“Have no eye for talent.”

A sudden lunge — I rushed into the room and swung at Crocell.

Magic suppressed for now. A straight thrust!

“Hm?”

The color of Crocell’s face changed the instant he saw my strike.

He retreated sharply — but it was useless.

I used telekinesis, no hesitation, and kicked off the ground to close the gap in the same instant.

“Ngh!”

Crocell understood he couldn’t shake me. He brought his sword around and swept me back.

Magic-reinforced strength — my body went skidding back from the force.

“Hah!”

But it didn’t matter.

Heinkel, right behind me, was already driving his blade in.

The bedroom was spacious by any standard, but still too small for three people fighting in it.

If anything, being knocked back gave Heinkel room to attack freely.

Thwack-thwack-thwack-crack!

“Ngh——!”

Heinkel’s rapid succession of strikes — each one a magic blade, magic channeled into every swing.

Without a magic blade of equal caliber, you couldn’t match it.

For a human, burning through magic at that rate was reckless — but Heinkel was from another race. He had far more to spend.

“Rrgh!”

After catching several blows, the marquis recognized the disadvantage and rolled away to break out of the exchange.

I had already seen it coming and was moving to cut him off.

“What……”

Thwack!

Crocell blocked my sword — but he couldn’t stop the spinning kick that followed.

A Telekinetic Fist — even through a magic guard, the impact traveled straight into the body.

“Urgh……”

Crocell, driven into the corner of the room, stared at me with wide eyes.

I said it again.

“Surrender, Marquis Crocell. You can’t win.”

“……”

Crocell steadied his breathing and assessed the room.

Me. Heinkel.

And Marquis Burzak with over a dozen soldiers ranged behind him.

Crocell was completely cornered.

“Surrender, and tell me everything you know. I’ll consider leniency.”

Between what Alicia had described and the sheer scale of the operation — this was never Crocell’s scheme alone.

There were others behind him. I needed to get my hands on them.

“Surrender? Me?”

Crocell smiled thinly.

“I think you have it backwards.”

“FIRE! FIRE!”

A shout from somewhere distant.

Boom!

A heavy, concussive impact. The vibration traveled up through the soles of my feet — the entire building shuddered.

“What……”

In that same instant, Crocell lunged at me and swung.

I arched nearly backward to avoid it and swept my sword in return.

Telekinesis applied to balance — even with a wildly off-center stance, I could still drive a sword through.

Clang-clang! Crack!

Strike and counterstrike traded — and then Crocell powered his magic blade forward in a thrust.

I pulled my sword back fast. Not fast enough.

“Ngh!”

Blood at my shoulder.

Crocell pushed to follow up, but Heinkel cut between them and deflected the blow.

Crocell’s brow furrowed. He studied me.

“……That is a peculiar fighting style.”

“Was that a bomb just now?”

The tremors were still coming — enough to shake the entire estate.

A bomb detonated from inside, by the feel of it.

But bombs were military issue. Prohibited from leaving imperial army hands by imperial decree.

A rule I personally wrote in as emperor.

How was this possible?

Crocell said nothing, watching me carefully with measuring eyes.

“Fire! It’s fire!”

“Marquis Burzak! You have to get out!”

The soldiers around Burzak began shouting.

Black smoke was rolling in from the corridor — this was no small matter. Stay in this building much longer and we’d burn.

“What will it be? Do we continue?”

Crocell’s taunt.

Burzak stamped and flailed, then looked at me and cried out,

“Librata! We have to run! Let’s go, let’s go!”

“……”

I thought for a moment, then spoke to Heinkel.

“Heinkel, escort Marquis Burzak out.”

“Pardon? Are you serious?”

“Yes. Trust no one. Crocell may have someone pre-positioned to finish Burzak in the chaos.”

Burzak clearly had no real combat ability.

Well — he was a noble, so he’d have something — but in this kind of confusion, one well-placed blade and it was over.

“If Burzak dies according to Crocell’s plan, the soldiers he bribed will move. That puts everything on track for Crocell, and House Librata gets caught in the bloodshed.”

Heinkel looked between me and Crocell, then gave a single nod.

“Understood. Good luck.”

Heinkel turned.

The sound of Burzak and his soldiers running, footsteps growing distant.

Heat pressing in. Smoke thickening.

I watched Crocell without moving.

I had crossed through worse than this more times than I could count.

“……”

Crocell had to run too if he wanted to live.

Equal footing. Whoever showed an opening first would lose.

“You have magic.”

Crocell said it suddenly, without particular emotion.

I didn’t react. Crocell continued.

“……Well, of course. Every noble has magic. But House Librata’s fool supposedly had none. That’s what everyone believed. So the lack of it was the disguise.”

“What would the disguise be for?”

“I don’t know. But I have to assume it exists. Otherwise Heinkel wouldn’t have left you here alone.”

In Karakas, a fight without magic was no fight at all.

You couldn’t pierce an enemy’s magic defense, and you couldn’t stop an enemy’s magic blade.

Most people in this situation would be sneering at me, or shaken and anxious. Crocell was measuring me.

He was a man of substance.

“Marquis Crocell!”

A voice from the corridor, sharp and sudden.

I shifted my stance reflexively — angled to respond to both Crocell inside the room and whoever was outside it at the same time.

A young knight came rushing through the doorway and pulled up short.

He recognized me and brought his sword up. Crocell raised a hand to stop him.

“Wait, Philon.”

“We’re out of time. We have to move.”

“Rigen. One last offer. Will you not join our cause? To set the empire right, to restore it, blood must be spilled!”

“Stop spouting bloody nonsense and see a doctor. Passing blood is a medical condition.”

“……So that’s your answer. Philon, Rigen has been hiding his magic. Handle him carefully.”

Philon’s expression changed.

More cautious now.

Two men leveled their swords at me.

Magic gathering at both blades.

“Well, this is……”

A real problem.

Honestly — I was in danger.

Of course, holding a magic blade was nothing I hadn’t done before.

But using a magic blade required a weapon specially forged for its wielder.

If I channeled my magic into this sword right now — it would shatter. Without question.

And on top of that, two capable fighters, one on each side of me.

The fire pressing in, the smell of burning, the heat — all of it sharpening the urgency.

My strength was nowhere close to what it had been in my days as emperor.

Nothing but terrible conditions, stacked one on top of another.

“……And still, not even a sliver of me wants to surrender.”

“What?”

“Do you know how much blood was spilled to build this empire, Marquis Alai Crocell?”

I said it.

Not as Rigen Librata, youngest son of a count’s house.

As Emperor Sirik Karakas.

“No war, and that’s the problem? Have you ever stood on a battlefield surrounded by soldiers crying out in agony? Have you ever gone through a fallen comrade’s belongings to find the letter he was going to send home to his family? Have you ever laid down to sleep with wounded soldiers moaning on pillows beside yours?”

“What are you……”

“You wouldn’t know. Because you never have. That’s why you can say something so senseless.”

I know.

Down to the marrow.

“Even if a hundred years have passed without an emperor, even if the twelve houses are flawed, even if the empire is rotting from the inside just as you say, how could anyone who truly understood what was sacrificed to build this peace ever choose to destroy it?”

“What are you even…..”

“I have never once forgotten the heroes who fought harder than anyone to build the Millennial Empire. Or the friends who believed I would see it through when I could barely believe it myself. That is why I will stop you here.”

Crocell blinked.

As if he had seen something that couldn’t be standing in front of him.

The knight who had just arrived, Philon, shouted,

“My lord! We have to go!”

“……I know!”

Crocell poured magic into his blade — a full charge.

Philon did the same.

Both swords blazing — the red of their magic climbing toward orange.

Second rank.

Reaching second rank with a magic blade was a genuine achievement.

Both of them had inherited it from those who came before.

“Hah!”

“Hyah!”

Both came at me from opposite sides at the same moment.

In that instant — I let my body drop as if crumpling, and swept my sword in a wide arc around me.

Magic gathered at the tip of my blade.

Red.

Orange.

And then…… yellow.

Third rank.

“What!”

Crocell’s voice cracked with shock.

But I was already faster.

This sword could hold it for exactly one strike.

Then I end them both at once.